Man takes to Twitch.tv with the hope of scoring 100m in the classic arcade game.

Some numbers just stick out. Joe DiMaggio hit safely in 56 straight games. UCLA Men's Basketball won 88 in a row. And for the classic gaming niche, Victor Ali's 80,364,995 points on a single quarter in Missile Command looms just as large.

Today however, seemingly out of nowhere, a challenger rose up and dethroned the 30-year-old record live on Twitch.tv. Victor Sandberg, aka Twitch user diskborsteMC, played for more than 56 hours and surpassed 81 million points around 2:20 p.m. PST. Sandberg mentioned a desire to reach 100 million in total, but he ended with 81,796,035 total points. It's an effort that's more than good enough to unseat the previous high score.

And, let's answer the natural question, how does Sandberg play for so many hours straight without breaks? Apparently, he's been building up extra cities and allowing them to get destroyed whenever he needs to step away from the machine for a moment. Sandberg said he could theoretically take up to a 30 minute break with such a strategy, but prefers to use only four or six minute breaks instead.

Sandberg's Twitch page is relatively new, but it's filled with test streams of Missile Command play and his previous attempts at the record. Before this most recent event, Sandberg's best was 56,675,180 total points. It's important to note Sandberg is utilizing marathon settings rather than tournament settings for Missile Command, as the two records are kept separately. (Tournament play does not allow players to earn bonus cities, so the scores there are much lower. The record in tournament settings has not eclipsed five million.)

Sandberg's performance will need verification from Twin Galaxies, the arcade turned international scoreboard for classic gaming (featured in the documentary Chasing Ghosts). The organization still maintains the official record keeping and also outlines the proper settings players must use to attempt a record-breaking run.

Atari released Missile Command in 1980 and players have continued to strive for the record ever since (check out this newspaper clipping of a 40-million-plus round in 1981). Record-seeking play is regarded highly enough that it's been the subject of multiple award-winning documentaries: King of Kong(about the battle for classic Donkey Kong supremacy) in 2007, and High Score about Missile Command bragging rightsin 2006. If not familiar with Missile Command, check out some basic gameplay from Atari's arcade version below.

Update: The original article published while Sandberg was still alive in his quest for 100 million. Within 20 minutes of the initial brief, Sandberg finally slipped up and ended his run. (The second paragraph has been edited to reflect this.) We apologize—hopefully the Ars jinx doesn't live in infamy like Sports Illustrated covers.

Promoted Comments

Somehow it is heartening to hear that, despite all the changes in society over the last 30 years, which place ever greater demands on our free time to maintain our positions at work, there are still people with this much spare time to waste. Give that man an NEA grant, I say!

Somehow it is heartening to hear that, despite all the changes in society over the last 30 years, which place ever greater demands on our free time to maintain our positions at work, there are still people with this much spare time to waste. Give that man an NEA grant, I say!

I find it amusing that Twin Galaxies is considered an authentic/official source for high scores in this day and age. Not only have they failed to properly vet scores in the past, but most games have the most arbitrary limitations for play. In reality, only a handful of games are truly still competitive there at all.

I long for a day when Twin Galaxies is completely dead, so people stop considering it authoritative.

And, let's answer the natural question, how does Sandberg play for so many hours straight without breaks? Apparently, he's been building up extra cities and allowing them to get destroyed whenever he needs to step away from the machine for a moment.

What ever happened to just taking a piss in a bottle? Social faux pas these days...

With all the drama unfolding there about their arbitrary rules for games and their even more arbitrary rules about record submission in the past who takes them seriously anymore?Everyone I know from any competitive gaming community either shrugs, chuckles or gets mad when they hear Twin Galaxies.

Edit:How serious people take their world records and how competitive they really are might be nicely illustrated here:http://www.twitch.tv/peaches__/b/375009110"Doom64 - Beating as many Twin Galaxies Individual Level world records as I can in one sitting"

I watched that documentary High Score about a previous attempt. What was crazy to me was in this mode, the game never got harder after a certain point and what you're basically doing is hoping the arcade machine doesn't crash. Apparently, though, it does crash. Often.

All the Missile Commands I used to play had a bug around 800,000, which made scores beyond that less useful. I would usually get bored after about an hour or two of play. FWIW, at my best could individually target incoming missiles. I didn't need to use a "wall" of shots.

Somehow it is heartening to hear that, despite all the changes in society over the last 30 years, which place ever greater demands on our free time to maintain our positions at work, there are still people with this much spare time to waste. Give that man an NEA grant, I say!

Probably much less time-intensive than MMORPG raiding at the higher levels, still.

An amazing achievement. I remember one Saturday morning at a friend's house back in the 80's I started playing Lode Runner on his Apple ][+. Six or so hours later I was miraculously still alive, past level 100 as I recall, seemingly unable to make a mistake. Shortly thereafter fatigue set in. I got physically and mentally tired of playing and the game ended soon after. Even with short breaks, I can't imagine playing a video game for 56 hours.

What's the point? I used to be one of those kids that could play Asteroids on one quarter for as long as I could stay awake. After a certain level it was no longer a question of skill but of physical endurance and interest. The game itself never got more difficult, at least no for me. After many hours it always ended up with me handing the game over to someone in the huge crowd and going to get a slice of pizza. Innocent times.

I do have to say that when I was playing at that level my level of focus and my hand to eye coordination has never even come close to being at that level. It was almost spooky what I could do with that game. Instead of multiple shots to hit saucers I could easily hit them with one shot while flying through a screen full of little asteroids that I would purposely leave intact to try and make the game more difficult.

Eventually I lost complete interest in video games that remains to this day. Maybe it has to do with the unnecessary complexity and the types of games that are popular today.

Missile Command, my all time favorite game. I remember a friend and I would go play it during lunch break from work, sometimes staying at the game room for hours. We got to where we could play for several hours on one quarter (after pouring in over $300 each to get proficient at it). We never got to the point of saving up enough cities so we could take a pee break... had to quit.

Back in 'the day,' I could play MC more or less indefinitely, at least until mental fatigue and a pissed off right wrist intervened. I once played 5+ hours, and was half zombified when I watched my last city die.

Some numbers just stick out. Joe DiMaggio hit safely in 56 straight games. UCLA Men's Basketball won 88 in a row. And for the classic gaming niche, Victor Ali's 80,364,995 points on a single quarter in Missile Command looms just as large.

Somehow it is heartening to hear that, despite all the changes in society over the last 30 years, which place ever greater demands on our free time to maintain our positions at work, there are still people with this much spare time to waste. Give that man an NEA grant, I say!

Someone here really doesn't appreciate being employed. I thank God I'm not looking for a job, making minimum wage of trying to garner fifteen minutes of fame and maybe a couple of dollars out of trying to beat the standing high score for a popular 80s arcade game.